Grub is working fine, as it is finding the kernel and it's being loaded and going through preliminary initialisation. After the kernel reads the partition table to get its' own mappings it will already have the root partition mounted due to grub having passed the 'root=' cli string. But it will need to remount it read/write so that it can invoke 'init' and complete its' init process while being able to log.

Thats were it will attemp to read /etc/fstab !

If there is an error there, or it wasn't able to find a correct mapping due to an error in the partition table ... it will spit that message out and just freeze. It wont fall back on the path provided by the boot-loader.

Another install ?, or a liveCD boot, mount the problematic 'root', ... should fix it.

>>
i think i put reiser in the kernel
>>

, best to make sure. As you mention an 'initrd' there may have been facilities that existed in the previous setup that needed an initrd to load support modules/drivers. It wouldn't be to hard to overlook those on a rebuild

A little time traversing the configuration tree gui, comparing it to whats set in the previous config, is time well spent. If you have a previous config ".config", from the initial install and an initrd was being used, there would likely be a few key items that may be modular and so need to be preloaded, but maybe not. Again, that needs to be checked. If so, they will need to be configured as built ins. If the previous config isn't available, or you haven't got one at all, you will be looking at a full fresh configuration from scratch. That should at least occupy a couple of hours and is best spread out over a few sessions to get it right. Backing up the resulting config to use as a base for further updates is highly recomended. As a "make mrproper" will wipe out all the files prefixed with a "dot", remove it from the backup name first. The kernel defaults will probably be off target as per your own requirments so a good bit of time spent on that stage is necessary.

If the previous kernel is available for boot, you may find a copy of its' config in ...
/proc/config.gz , to use as a base.

yip that's the one i found by googling subfs.
anyway it doesn't compile, it makes lots of errors. Any ideaswhee to get something similar, like automount (does that only do mount, not umount?)
i also don't know how to set it up, i looked at the man pages but i still haven't a clue. aargh!

HAL/D-BUS/pmount is the best way to handle auto-mounting IMO. It all happens in userspace, so no need for kernel patches. If you use KDE, it should handle it for you (especially with 3.5, 3.4's automounting could be a little quirky). With other desktops, install ivman.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein)

yeh i have 3.4 i think... the one that comes with suse 10.... kk ill try that, but you cant eject it if it's mounted as anything other than subfs at ta moment without right clickin the drive and pressin eject